Blackouts are certainly changing the way people are living in Santo Domingo. At seven in the evening one can hear doors closing in the northern parts of Santo Domingo. University students are hesitant to schedule evening or night classes because of the electricity situation. The end of winter, the beginning of the warmer weather and with oil prices reaching US$55 a barrel and the electric companies controlling purchases of fuel oils, the northern reaches of Santo Domingo are experiencing 4-10 hour blackouts. All the way from La Cienega to Villa Mella, Los Prados to Arroyo Hondo, barrio and residential neighborhood are all affected by the renewed lack of electricity. The Itabo facilities are off line for repairs and other producers are sporadically off line in what the current Superintendent of Electricity refuses to call “financial blackouts.” Francisco Mendez does admit that at times the companies that produce electricity do not send it to the poorer barrios because “they will not recover the costs” of its production. As reported in El Caribe, 64.4% of the people questioned in a recent survey said that they did not pay for their electricity, 27.7% said that they pay a fixed rate and 4% said that they paid for the electricity with their rent payment. According to Mendez, “the electricity production is normal; the blackouts have never really left, what they have done is ration them out. Oil has gone up in price and this is the only solution.”